Reviews

Too Human

Both robots and zombies employ the same tactics when attacking you. They run at you and when they get to you they start hacking with their claws. Some of them have guns, but those mostly serve to annoy you more than anything else. At no point will you need to trouble yourself with any other strategy besides hitting enemies with melee attacks. You can pop them up in the air if you want, but this is totally optional and sometimes ineffectual against certain enemies -- the only things juggling enemies accomplishes is building your combo bar faster and looking totally silly (your character is capable of mysteriously hovering in the air with no explanation either graphical or contextual for his sudden defiance of gravity). This lack of creativity on the part of your foes drains whatever melee cleverness may be contained within the combat system and only makes the action of Too Human feel even more same-y and repetitive.

You are typically joined by a troop of human companions on any given mission, but they are totally useless and constantly spout inane banter, even when they're all dead. That's right, if you suffer through a battle in which all of your "teammates" are killed, they will continue to harass your ears with their mindless chatter even though they now reside in Valhalla. They rarely have any impact on a fight because their weapons don't seem to do any damage and the mechanized and undead warriors typically breeze right past them to get to you, only barely acknowledging them for the fodder they are. It's probably just as well, though, because it's not like you can give them squad commands or anything that might have made their presence necessary.

Too Much

The only redeeming characteristic left to Too Human is its incredible loot carousel that offers tantalizing bits of weaponry and armor every third or fourth kill. The problem with this shower of goodies is that it feels excessive and traps you between two options: Constantly sift through new acquisitions or miss out on the benefit of some new doodad until you're ready to sift (a prospect that grows more daunting with each drop that you don't address immediately). With this much loot pouring out of the enemies, it trivializes almost every individual drop to the point that you can never get too comfortable with a pair of gloves or chest piece. This issue is compounded in the co-op game as both players must routinely stop and paw through the detritus, dragging out the process of completing a level. Never mind the fact that many pieces of armor share the exact same graphics as another (which is expected with so much loot), because you're just going to get something new that works better in a handful of seconds anyway.

Too Empty

The blow of repetitive gameplay and broken loot mechanics could possibly be softened if there were some kind of riveting narrative to be gleaned, but unfortunately, Too Human seems more interested in queuing up more ranks of robots for you to destroy than actually explaining anything to you. Who are the Aesir really and, most importantly, where did they come from? These questions are left totally unanswered even though they are of pivotal importance to the enjoyment of the story. Instead, you get a hokey plot that revolves around some dude killing your wife and amnesia. Amnesia? Really? When combined with the pointless banter between your throwaway compatriots, you can probably find better writing in any given episode of "The Golden Girls."

Deprived of a decent storyline, innovative mechanics, and limited variation in either enemies or environments, Too Human is barely worthy of a weekend rental. It's an extremely repetitive treadmill set in a world you'll never get a chance to actually learn anything about thanks to the almost complete lack of exposition. Whatever points it scores for its somewhat interesting approach to combat are almost instantly retracted once you perform them for the umpteenth time on the same robot that fights in the same way. Unfortunately, Too Human can't even provide decent graphics at a consistent framerate, as graphical hitches and choppy visuals are a regular occurrence. All of these negatives leave little reason to recommend Too Human.